The Parliament is one of Budapest's iconic and most striking buildings and is part of the city's UNESCO World Heritage site. Based on Imre Steindl's neo-Gothic architectural design, it took 17 years to build and was one of the largest buildings in the world when it was completed in 1904. 265 metres in length, 123 metres at its widest and with a dome of 96 metres, it seems rather large for such a relatively small country, but remember that Hungary was three times its current size at that time so the Parliament was built to express the pride of a much larger country. It was renovated recently so you can now see it in its original pristine splendour. Inside, the Crown Jewels are on public display.

300 metres south of the Parliament, on the bank of the Danube near the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, is the famous and very moving Shoes on the Danube memorial, which should not be missed. This memorial consists of sixty pairs of shoes, made of iron but looking very much like well-worn 1940s style shoes, in a line along the riverbank. This refers to a very dark time in the history of Budapest during the winter of 1944-45 when the fascist party (the Arrow Cross, which had 30 seats in the Parliament) conducted a horrendous reign of terror in the city. Their militiamen took some 15,000 to 20,000 Jews in batches from the ghetto, lined them up along the Danube, ordered them to take off the shoes before they shot them, letting their bodies fall into the river to save the authorities the trouble of burying them. Thought up by film maker Can Togay and created by sculptor Gyula Pauer, this very simple and touching memorial that remembers and honours all those men, women and children who were so brutally killed, was opened in 2005 and is now world famous.